Thursday, October 27, 2011

The following public service announcements were a regular sight during kid shows' commercial breaks on local stations throughout the 1980s and well into the 1990s. In the clips below, Bugs tells us of the dangers lurking in the kitchen, from pots of boiling water to dangling power cords; Daffy gives two kids a "burn-prevention quiz"; and Tweety reveals how the bathroom could be the most dangerous room in the house. These spots were actually excerpts taken from a 22 minute film made for the Shriners Burns Institute in 1982 called "An Ounce of Prevention". The new animation was produced by Hal Geer and directed by Gerry Chiniquy.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

I have a lot of Looney Tunes stuff. Much of it has been featured here before...but I thought it might be fun to round up a whole bunch of it and make a cool still life photo. It doesn't seem like much when it's scattered around on various shelves, in cabinets, boxes, drawers, etc...but put it all together, and it's a Misce-Looney-Ous explosion! Oh, believe me, there's more. "Thisth isth JUSSSTHT a thample, Ruggles!" Click the pictures to make them larger and see closeups of different sections.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Let's take a trip back to happier times, way back to the 1990's when you could walk into your local shopping mall and max out your credit cards buying Looney Tunes junk.

A production company sent to cover the 1994 grand opening of the Warner Bros. Studio Store in the Florida Mall in Orlando, FL has uploaded a vintage, slickly edited video of the events of that day on YouTube. Embedding has been disabled, so you will have to click here to view it. Not only does it offer a glimpse of the store's interior and merchandise, but also appearances by a gang of costumed Looney Tunes characters, a marching band, and even basketball star Shaquille O'Neal.

You will also want to check out this Flickr page filled with images of WB Store catalogs and merchandise (the above picture of the now-worthless gift certificate above came from that page).

Jerry Beck on Cartoon Brew has a short post today on the return of Looney Tunes merchandise. This includes this set of 4GB USB flash drives that I didn't know were available. This first series includes Tweety, Sylvester, Taz, and Speedy Gonzales. More details at the company's website.

Jerry's post also mentions the series of Looney Tunes Mr. Potato Heads which we mentioned in this Misce-Looney-ous posting from a few weeks back and a series of LT laplander hats available at Hop Topic stores.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Since you loyal Misce-Looney-Ous readers seem to have enjoyed the cartoon commentaries I've done in the past, I thought you'd be glad to know that I purchased a new computer microphone. It sounds MUUUUCCCCH better than the old one, and I don't have to do as much editing to get the recordings to sound decent. That means you'll be hearing a lot more of me talking over cartoons!

If you haven't checked out the Looney Tunes page at Zazzle.com, you're in for a treat. It's almost impossible to find a t-shirt or a coffee mug with a Looney Tunes character on it in a store these days, but thanks to Zazzle, you can actually customize your own online and have it shipped straight to you. It may be the only place in the world to get a Claude Cat t-shirt like mine:

There are all kinds of wonderful images featuring characters familiar and obscure, in all sorts of artistic styles and poses. Whoever put together the library of artwork clearly cared. Careful, it's not cheap...but I'm a satisfied customer just the same!

Here's a short bit from a 1961 episode of The Bugs Bunny Show. Bugs and Sylvester, both munching on Post Alpha-Bits, are introducing a commercial featuring a Post postman character (the actual ad they are introducing isn't in the video below).

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Welcome to a new and possibly recurring series here on Misce-Looney-ous, the Coloring Book Revue. There are hundreds of Looney Tunes-themed coloring books floating around out there and I thought it may be fun to showcase some of them here. Instead of starting off with the good covers, this first post will show some of the more bizarre covers I have come across. For some reason I am oddly fascinated with these coloring book covers of the 1970s and 1980s. It's like a glimpse of the Looney Tunes characters in some sort of weird, alternate dimension.

If you have any Looney coloring book covers (the good, bad, or ugly) you'd like to share... e-mail them to looneyblog at yahoo dot com.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Friday, October 7, 2011

Below are some of the faux magazine covers in honor of Bugs' 51 1/2th anniversary that flash on the screen at the start of the 1991 short "Blooper Bunny" (including one for Better Holes and Gardens which wasn't in the final cartoon).

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Here's an odd piece of Warner artwork recently posted on the Van Eaton Galleries website. It appears to be model cel from an unmade Speedy Gonzales cartoon featuring Speedy and an enemy named Butch Catsidy (who looks like the Tasmanian Devil, suggesting that Bob McKimson was going to be involved with this production). Does anyone have any other information?

Monday, October 3, 2011

Here's a promotional film from 1951 for Capitol Records starring Mel Blanc titled "Wanna Buy a Record?". Mel is a frustrated record salesman who gives a reluctant customer (played by Billy May) a tour of the Capitol Records facilities. Sadly, the last five minutes seem to be cut off from this version on YouTube.